Omigosh! 'OC' With Warmer Duds?

By MELENA RYZIK

Published: September 12, 2007

The sex starts about five minutes into the premiere of ''Gossip Girl,'' a new series based on the best-selling young-adult books by Cecily von Ziegesar. Within 20 minutes the characters, privileged Upper East Side private schoolers, are downing martinis at the Palace Hotel. There is some pot smoking in Central Park, and more sex, at the Campbell Apartment bar, and more pot smoking, en route to Queens. Forget the No. 7 train: this gang travels to the outer boroughs via limo, with bottles of Champagne in hand.

For the teenagers of New York, 10021, the city is a playground of temptation. Created by Josh Schwartz, the 31-year-old wunderkind behind ''The OC,'' and his business partner Stephanie Savage, ''Gossip Girl,'' which is scheduled to make its debut next Wednesday on the CW network, has already gained buzz as the East Coast ''OC.'' It features an ensemble cast of fresh-faced actors (including Blake Lively as a nicer Marissa Cooper and Penn Badgley as a Seth Cohen type); soapy plot lines (Will Nate dump Blair for Serena? Will Rufus reconnect with Lilly?); a pop- culture soundtrack (Amy Winehouse, Rihanna and Peter Bjorn and John) and teenage tech savvy (they text-message constantly).

Narrated by the Gossip Girl, an unseen blogger -- voiced by Kristen Bell, of ''Veronica Mars''-- who keeps tabs on this scene like an adolescent Gawker, the show has a slight twist on previous nighttime soaps: younger stars, greater wealth and more location shots. The entire series is filmed in New York. ''There's no New York City on TV, or there wasn't when we started making the pilot, except what you could see in the background behind the dead bodies on cop shows,'' Ms. Savage said. ''The 'Sex and the City' fun, romantic world'' was no longer visible. And, she added:

''We've never seen the city from the point of view of teenagers. It was very intriguing to see these young people -- so sophisticated, so driven, so well traveled -- feeling pressured to succeed more than their parents. It felt like a world with high stakes for young people.''

It is also a high-stakes show for CW. Along with ''Reaper,'' a comedy-horror hybrid, ''Gossip Girl'' is a centerpiece of its fall lineup. The books' fans, a built-in audience, are already blogging about how the TV version differs.

''What's funny about these teenagers is they grew up watching 'Sex and the City,' even though it wasn't about them,'' Mr. Schwartz said. ''And I think they've probably incorporated that into how they mythologize New York. I fought really hard to shoot the show in New York because we want New York to be a character in the show.'' Given their clout as hit makers, Mr. Schwartz and Ms. Savage persuaded the network to comply, despite the added costs.

''In my mind there really hasn't been a show that has that opulence and that wealth and that setting since the days of 'Dynasty' and 'Dallas,' '' said Dawn Ostroff, the president of CW. ''And of course the generation we speak to have probably never heard of those.''

Translating that high-society world into contemporary teenage culture was tricky.

''I thought it was going to be the sort of Disney version of the books, really toned down and corny,'' said Ms. von Ziegesar, the creator of the book series, which has more than five million copies in print. ''A while back,'' she added, ''there was a script circulating, and the boys were playing polo in Central Park. And I was horrified, because that doesn't happen. It was such a stereotype.''

Neither Mr. Schwartz nor Ms. Savage was familiar with the trappings of the socialite milieu. (''I am a latchkey kid from Calgary, Alberta,'' Ms. Savage said. Mr. Schwartz grew up in Rhode Island, the son of toy designers.) But they did their homework. Ms. von Ziegesar, who is from Connecticut and attended the Nightingale-Bamford School on East 92nd Street, took Ms. Savage on a tour of her old haunts.

''We started at Barneys and walked all the way up the 90s and came down to Fifth Avenue, seeing the streets flooded with the private-school kids, just walking through the rituals,'' Ms. Savage said. ''I had breakfast at Sarabeth's and Sant Ambroeus coffee. I met a bunch of girls at Jackson Hole, and we had fries. Cheese fries.''

Of course urban verisimilitude only goes so far: though Ms. von Ziegesar hoped to impress on Ms. Savage that her classmates weren't all Prada-wearing, limo-riding sophisticates, the characters in the show largely are. ''It is aspirational,'' Ms. von Ziegesar conceded. ''Even the uniforms are nicer.''

And the show's frank depiction of adolescent sex and drug use has raised some eyebrows among network executives and television critics.

''Everybody approached this with the understanding that this was a heightened reality,'' Ms. Ostroff said. ''It wasn't teenagers as we know them throughout the country.''

Mr. Schwartz said the criticism of the hedonistic lifestyle was fair. ''We do feel a certain level of responsibility to show the repercussions of their actions,'' he said. The show's moral compass is represented by a middle-class family, the Humphreys; they're so bohemian, they live in Brooklyn. Mr. Badgley's character, Dan Humphrey, considered something of an outsider (he wears hoodies instead of polo shirts), fulfills Adam Brody's role in ''The OC'', which is to say Mr. Schwartz's, as the darkly comic observer.

''I am the Josh stand-in,'' Mr. Badgley said, adding that it does have its perks. ''I guess I know Josh will never write himself out.''

Mr. Schwartz, who is still based in Los Angeles, plans to visit monthly to check in -- or, as he put it, ''you know, hang out, high-five a few people and then leave.''

The rest of the staff -- Ms. Savage and five other writers (two men and three women) and the postproduction team -- will remain in Los Angeles. Though in the early days of ''The OC'' Mr. Schwartz was famous for writing many of the episodes himself, he is taking a slightly more hands-off role now, partly of necessity.

He is also behind another new show, the NBC comedy-thriller ''Chuck,'' about a nerdy guy who inadvertently discovers government secrets. Both ''Chuck'' and ''Gossip Girl'' have offices in the same building on the Warner Brothers lot, and Mr. Schwartz climbs the stairs between the two all day.

Though the comparisons to ''The OC'' are inevitable, Ms. Savage and Mr. Schwartz are careful to say only that they hope ''Gossip Girl'' is equally successful. ''We're starting from a place of wanting to do this because it felt different, not because it felt the same,'' Ms. Savage said.

And if ''Gossip Girl'' becomes a runaway hit?

Mr. Schwartz, who said he was glad when ''The OC'' was canceled last year after four seasons, is prepared, up to a point. ''The idea of doing something for more than four years is, like, scary,'' he said. ''I don't know how people do a show for, like, nine years. I couldn't stay focused for that long.''

PHOTOS: High-maintenance preppies in the CW series ''Gossip Girl.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY K. C. BAILEY/CW)(pg. E1); Meet me at the fountain by the Plaza: Leighton Meester, center left, with Blake Lively during filming of ''Gossip Girl,'' a new series shot entirely in New York City. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RUBY WASHINGTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. E6)